How to Know If You Are Alive

Because some people need it spelled out for them, ya know?

1. Check your pulse
If there is a steady beat, this simply means you are not dead, not that you are necessarily alive. But in order to be alive you must ascertain you’re not one of the walking dead among us, which would open up a whole new can of worms.

2. Ensure that you have working organs, especially in the metaphorical sense.
I’ve never been in a relationship. I’m scared of commitment and naturally independent; I have always been focused on school, shutting out the kind of distractions puppy love brings. I chose scholarships to college over cubic zirconium promise rings, so naturally, my heart has never been broken, nor has it fluttered, flitted or ached beyond any sense I could quickly stifle.

There is a beating in my chest, but that doesn’t mean I have a heart. Plenty of things beat: drums, basketballs on a court, *cough*Chris Brown*cough*. If you’ve never felt something, after all, how do you know for sure it exists? I do know, however, that my heart can breathe because it is often suffocating under the pressure of my brain. And that is different and more indicative of vitality than a simple beat.

3. Determine that you feel so passionately about something that any threat to it evokes a passionate response:
Your art, music, writing, sport, friends and family, civil rights, love – whatever. If something tried to destroy any of those things and you become angry, sorrowful, uncontrollable, then you are by no means a complete waste of space and flesh. But passion means nothing if you can’t check the final box.

4. Act
People suffer when those who can do something, don’t. When the Jackson Public Schools’ board cut the Strings program concerned parents went into frenzy and acted to have the decision repealed. Had they sat by and hosted a pity-party instead of storming board meetings, the program would still be dead and many underprivileged kids would not have an opportunity to study classical arts.

They had passion and action. One simply can’t exist and expect to be alive. Just as one may feel passion and expect there to be love also, that is not always the case. Sand put into a sieve simply falls out. To be alive you don’t even have to act in the name of goodness or peace, you can be a terrible person out to corrupt. But please, for the love of humanity, act! Passive people have killed more human beings than Hitler, King Herod and the like ever did, because what do those people care? They’re not even alive anyway.

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The Mississippi Free Press produced this story through the MFP Solutions Lab, supported by the Solutions Journalism Network. This series digs into Mississippi’s systemic issues and sheds light on responses to them in other communities. Beyond just reporting on problems, these stories interrogate their causes and inspect potential solutions.